


mama told me not to waste my life

by phae



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Be Careful What You Wish For, Character Death, Developing Relationship, I Made Myself Cry, Little bit of Fluff, M/M, So much angst, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-25
Updated: 2013-09-25
Packaged: 2017-12-27 14:16:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/979901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phae/pseuds/phae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Take a leap of faith, <i>zog pak</i>,” she instructs lowly, her gaze heavy with the import of her meaning. “And you shall grow wings on the way down.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	mama told me not to waste my life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [totalnerdatheart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/totalnerdatheart/gifts).



> Title is from Little Mix's _Wings_.
> 
> Gift fic based on [totalnerdatheart](http://totalnerdatheart.tumblr.com/)'s trope prompt: be careful what you wish for. The idea festered. And then it exploded.

[ _Listen to the soundtrack here._ ](http://8tracks.com/dasriann/leap-of-faith)

* * *

Even after Trick gave him his first bow and taught him how to make it sing, Clint’s favorite place at the circus is still Madame Dafina’s tent. There’s something inexplicably _right_ about the grip of the bow in his hands, and it’s easy to calm his flighty mind when there’s a target in sight, but Madame Dafina’s tent is the closest thing he’s ever found that exudes a sense of _home_.

She always has incense lit, but keeps a flap open so that the scent never grows too strong, and she lights gas lanterns for ambiance. There are bright, flowing fabrics draped all over both her and the tent, and when Clint visits, she lets him play with her collection of silk scarves. Sometimes he wears them as sashes around his waist, sauntering around the small tent like a boasting pirate, and other times he wraps them over his face and pretends he’s travelling through sandstorms in the desert.

Madame Dafina entertains customers with Tarot readings and by glancing into their futures through a crystal ball. She teaches Clint about the Tarot cards every now and then, but usually she shows him tricks with a regular deck of cards and gives him tips on how to cheat Barney and the other carnie kids out of their wages when they play poker. She lets Clint sit behind a thin curtain in her tent while she spins fantastic tales to her customers, and Clint slowly picks up the ways she reads these people and caters her words to their inner hopes and wishes.

During a slow night on the outskirts of a backwater town, Clint sits across from Madame Dafina, absently flipping the Tarot deck while she reads a well-worn romance novel in the flickering lantern light. “I wish it could be real sometimes,” Clint mutters, more to himself than her, but Madame Dafina hums inquiringly anyway. With a faint blush staining his cheeks, he continues, “You know, magic. I just, it’d be cool if it wasn’t all scams and lies.”

Madame Dafina folds down the corner of a page to mark her place and sets the book down on the table, piercing Clint with the weight of her full attention. “And why is that, Clinton? Do you desire something that only true magic can grant you?”

He shrugs awkwardly and gathers the deck to shuffle through the cards. “Doesn’t everyone?”

 

“I’m sure there are many who do,” Madame Dafina agrees patiently. “But at the moment, I am only interested in what you would ask for, _zog pak._ ”

 

With a frown, Clint tosses the cards onto the table. “You already know, don’t you? You always know what I’m gonna say before I ever say it.”

 

Madame Dafina’s laugh is like wind chimes rustled by a summer breeze. “And yet you doubt that there is magic in the world.” She smiles indulgently, leaning forward to tidy up the cards. “But come, tell me what it is, though I already know. I think it would do you good to admit it instead of hiding it deep in your heart.”

 

“I want—” Clint tries, but the words jam in his throat. Lacing his fingers tightly together in his lap, he whispers, “I wish I could fly.”

 

With a radiant smile, Madame Dafina reaches across the table, her palms opened in invitation. “Let me see your hands.”

 

“Why?” Clint asks suspiciously, inching his hands towards her nonetheless.

 

“So that I may give you my wings,” she states simply. “I’ve never found much use for them. But you, I think, could give them greater purpose.”

 

Clint’s face screws up in confusion, his eyes flicking over her shoulder suspiciously though he knows there’s nothing there. “You don’t have wings.”

 

Holding his hands between her own, Madame Dafina closes her eyes. “Your eyes see a good deal more than most, but they are hardly capable of seeing _all_.”

 

Clint’s fingers itch faintly, and he tries to tug them free from her grasp, but she holds tight. An odd warmth seems to flow from her hands into his, a heat on the verge of overwhelming like sitting out in the sun for too long. After a few moments, Madame Dafina opens her eyes and pulls her hands away, leaning forward to catch Clint’s gaze with her own. “Take a leap of faith, _zog pak_ ,” she instructs lowly, her gaze heavy with the import of her meaning. “And you shall grow wings on the way down.”

 

Warily, Clint pulls his arms back, tucking his elbows against his sides. When he opens his palms, he’s cradling a grey feather, the tips tinged charcoal.

 

\---

 

Clint wakes up before the sun’s even up because his back is itching like _crazy._ He rolls over to rub his shoulders against the stiff sheets on his cot, but it doesn’t help any. He tries to reach the annoying spots so he can scratch at them with jagged nails, but they’re just below his shoulder blades where he can’t touch with his arm over his shoulder or with it twisted up behind him.

 

He crawls out of bed and tiptoes over to the mirror propped up in the corner of their dinky trailer, keeping quiet even though Barney’s not likely to hear him over his thundering snores. He tears off his t-shirt, shaking it out for good measure, and turns to look at his back, checking it over for mosquito bites. But there’s nothing there, and the itch is only getting worse.

 

With a frustrated sigh, he grabs his bow from under his bed and heads for the big top since he’s not about to get back to sleep when his back is twitching every few seconds to try and get rid of the unpleasant feeling. The trance he falls into while shooting might help put it out of his mind, though.

Except that this time it doesn’t, and he can’t clear his mind of the lavender scent of Madame Dafina’s tent or the echo of her words, even though he knows it’s impossible for her to have given him wings, that the feather now under his flat pillow on his cot was nothing but some smooth sleight-of-hand.

Lost in thought, Clint is shocked to come back into awareness on the ladder that leads to the trapeze platform. He’s already half way up, though, so he just keeps going and stands at the top. The itch starts to ease and he rolls his shoulders experimentally. His back feels—different.

He licks his lips and shuffles closer to edge, and the skin over his shoulder blades grows warm. Clint starts to grin, but then he slaps his hand over his mouth to pull the corners down quickly. It’s not real. Madame Dafina was just pulling his leg, and he’s obviously still got a lot to learn if he fell for it so easily.

But then something pushes him forward, like a hand shoving him in the back, and he topples off the platform. He’s falling without form, and that’s like Circus 101, learning how to fall without getting yourself killed. No one is more shocked than Clint when not only does he not die due a stupid stunt without a spotter, he doesn’t even break a limb landing in the safety net wrong, mostly because he never touches the net, suspended as he is mid-air by fucking _wings_.

He laughs as he glances back at the tawny feathers spread out behind him. His stomach drops when he blinks and they aren’t there anymore, but he doesn’t drop, and he can still feel them on the perimeter of his perception. The wings flex, and then Clint _flies_.

\---

“Cover’s blown. Get out of there,” Coulson orders over the comm. Clint’s all for beating a hasty retreat in this situation, don’t get him wrong, but the drawback of his lovely perch is that there’s only one good exit strategy, and as part of their blown cover, the weapons-dealing thugs have his exit covered with deadly looking machine guns.

“Exit’s a no-go, sir,” he breathes down the line. “Looking for an alternate route down now.”

He can hear Coulson draw in a shaky breath, but his voice is as collected as ever when he replies, “Get to the northeast corner. See if you’ve got something to act as an anchor and—”

“No grappling hook arrow today, sir,” Clint interrupts, hastily packing his gear into his bag.

“What? Agent, repeat that.”

“Ah, see, the powers that be said I needed to cut back on the trick arrows—”

“Powers that be? Barton! Unless I sign off on it, you are more than free to ignore any ammo stipulations Garrett tries to impose. He’s an arrogant asswipe with no real authority—”

Clint huffs out a laugh. “As much as I’m digging this new Coulson that says shit like _asswipe_ , I’ve gotta get off this roof. Head for the safehouse, sir. I’ll be about ten minutes behind you.” Scoping out the northeast corner, Clint’s glad to note there doesn’t seem to be any foot traffic around. Cuts down the witness count, at least.

“How the hell are you planning to get down without a grappling hook, agent?”

Clint grins cheekily even though Coulson can’t see it. “Why, magic, sir. How else?”

Backing up to get a good running jump so that he doesn’t bump into any brick walls on his way down, Clint sprints for the building’s ledge.

“Barton!” Coulson shouts over the comm. “Don’t you dare—!” Clint’s never managed to make Coulson shout before; he gives himself a mental pat on the back for such an achievement even as he leaps off the roof.

\---

Clint’s got a good limp going by the time he comes up on the apartment building where SHIELD’s stashed away a safehouse. Not from a bad landing—he’s friggin’ _Hawkeye_ , alright? Even if no one else grasps the full nuance of the name, it is well-deserved. He knows how to control a mad dive off a building without looking like he’s just floating down without a care in the world. He’s had fifteen years to figure his magical wings out; he’s way past rookie mistakes like that.

Nah, what got him was hot lead biting into the side of his thigh _after_ he landed. Weapons-dealing thugs are not to be messed with when it comes to artillery power, though their aim could due with some improvement. But he’s free of them now and in the stairwell, coming up on the closest thing to a safe haven he’s going to find this side of the equator.

He’d tied off his leg as soon as he could, but it’s still leaking blood sluggishly, and his leg’s been getting steadily stiffer as he goes, so he’s really looking forward to being able to take a load off, and the gun that’s in his face as soon as he steps through the door is not overly appreciated.

“Hell, Coulson,” he drawls, leaning heavily on the door frame. “If I didn’t know any better I’d think you were surprised to see me.”

 

Coulson lowers his weapon and helpfully grabs Clint’s elbow before he can slide to the floor. “You jumped off a twenty-five story building with no line and no feasible way of making it to the ground alive.”

 

“Oh, ye of little faith,” Clint teases with a grin, happy to sink onto the couch Coulson pulls him over to before goes to retrieve his field medkit from his bag.

 

“Any chance you’re going tell me how you pulled off that miracle?” Coulson asks skeptically, cutting open his pants leg to get at the bullet wound.

 

And the thing is, see, the thing is that Clint trusts Coulson. Not like, _trusts_ him or anything, but he trusts Coulson to have his back and stick up for him more than anyone else he’s ever known, including his own brother. It’s kind of a big deal for Clint, and even though he’s never said anything about it, he’s pretty sure Coulson gets it. But that doesn’t mean he’s going to tell the guy about his mystical, invisible wings; they’re one of those things that’s better left unsaid.

 

Clint’s not entirely sure they’re even tangible to other people. Sometimes they’re so still that he nearly forgets they’re there. And they don’t tear through his clothes or anything, or leave him cramped and trapped in the close quarters of a ventilation shaft. But when he needs to fly, they’re definitely real and there, ‘cause he’s not keeping himself in the air with his damn mind. And sometimes they move to block debris from smacking him in the face, or to brush back behind him and let him know just how close the goon trying to sneak up on him is getting. So yeah, magical wings that he can’t quite explain, so there’s no point in opening his trap about them and getting shunted down to the R&D labs for further testing.

 

Clint smirks, though only with his mouth. “A magician never reveals his secrets.”

 

\---

 

There’s smoke everywhere and fires breaking out all over, and Clint’s stuck on a floor somewhere in the middle of a tower of an office building with a scared kid who looks to be about sixteen and his deadbeat dad who’s now more dead than beat at the kid’s feet.

 

Clint’s comm is out, probably some kind of interference from the fucking _bomb_ some idiot let off when they caught sight of SHIELD moving in. Clint’s target was the head-honcho who he already had eyes on, though, and he was already inside, so no sense in backing out just because of a minor equipment malfunction.

 

Except that now he has no way of contacting Coulson or the rest of his team to arrange an evac, and heading up or down within the building is kind of out of the question at this point. Clint doesn’t have anything on him but a handgun lifted off of a guard and no way out alive other than jumping out the window, which is fine by him, not a problem if you discount the kid.

 

But Clint can’t discount the kid. He didn’t deserve for his dad to drag him off and try to use him as a human shield, and he sure as hell doesn’t deserve to die in this raging fire pit. His dad’s sins don’t fall to him upon death like some sick inheritance; he’s a victim here, and it’s Clint’s job to help and protect him.

 

The issue, though, is that Clint’s never tried to fly with an extra passenger. The few glimpses he’s caught of his wings, they’re big, sure, in comparison to a bird’s, but he has no idea how strong they are with another buck-fifty weighing them down. Still, he has to at least try, so he grabs the kid and heads for the window.

 

The poor kid’s still in shock, and he follows easily enough, but he doesn’t take his eyes off his dad’s body, a single bullet hole in the dead center of his forehead. Clint fires two rounds into the glass, and it splinters enough for the chair he throws at it to take the majority of the window with it on it’s way down.

 

Once they’re leaning out the window, the kid snaps out of it enough to start screaming and struggling. “Calm down!” Clint shouts, his grip on the kid firm but difficult to maintain as he flails around. “It’s through the window, or into the inferno!”

 

The kid settles enough for Clint to adjust his grip, and then he tips them out into the air, his wings spreading out to try and catch them. Flying’s never been a struggle for Clint, not even in the early days after Madame Dafina first gave him hers. They’re some kind of magical extension of his body, like phantom limbs that he didn’t have to lose first to feel. But faced with supporting him and the kid, his wings flap madly just to slow them down.

 

The kid starts to freak out again, kicking and punching at Clint. One arm swings wide, and it clips Clint’s left wing, sending them into an uncontrolled tailspin. Clint overcorrects and his wings scramble for the purchase of an up-draft. The kid pushes at him sharply, wrenching away from Clint’s arms. Clint reaches out for him, panicking because they’re nearly to the ground, but without the added weight, his wings catch the wind and pull him up just when he’s close enough to get a hand on the kid’s jacket.

 

They hit the ground, and all Clint sees is red.

 

\---

 

“It’s not your fault, Clint,” Coulson states firmly, stubbornly holding Clint’s gaze even though Clint can’t do much to avoid it with the precautionary brace around his neck. Clint doesn’t bother disagreeing with him, Coulson’ll only give him a lecture about only placing blame where blame is due and mandate sessions with the SHIELD shrinks. Coulson can try to absolve Clint’s guilt all he wants, but that won’t stop him from feeling it.

 

“Stop it,” Coulson orders, whapping him lightly on the head with the mission report he’s been filling out at Clint’s bedside in medical. “You did everything you could to get both of you out of a shitty situation and into a chance at surviving.” Coulson’s hard glare softens as he glances over the machines surrounding Clint. “It’s a miracle you even lived to feel guilty about it.”

 

It’s not, though. Clint’s never been in danger from falling. Given the mystic abilities of his wings, they’d probably work just fine even if he was unconscious, not that he’s ever had an opportunity to test that theory. But to get Coulson to understand that, he’d have to tell him about the wings in the first place, which Clint wouldn’t really mind except that Coulson’s not likely to believe him without some kind of demonstration, and Clint’s not really up to one at the moment.

 

Coulson sits back in the visitor’s chair with a sigh. “You tried.”

 

_And failed. Miserably._ Clint thinks uncharitably. Coulson gives him a peeved look like he knows what Clint’s thinking. Knowing Coulson, he just might. Clint rotates his torso carefully so he’s looking at the curtain around his bed instead of his handler.

 

“Clint,” Coulson beseeches, but Clint doesn’t turn back; twisting the first time was a good deal more painful than he was anticipating. “Sometimes the chips just don’t fall in our favor. It’s nobody’s fault.”

 

Clint blinks back tears, and he’s honestly not sure if they’re sad-tears or pained-tears or exhausted-tears. _If it was some 50/50 chance thing, then it should’ve been me,_ he almost says.

 

Coulson stands and takes his hand suddenly, leaning over to look Clint in the eye again. “I know it’s selfish, but I don’t really care—if only one of you got to live, I’m glad it was you. I’m never going to regret that you survived, and I’m not about to let you regret it either,” Coulson asserts, his gaze heavy with promise.

 

_Well_ , Clint thinks, drawing in a shuddery breath, _at least there’s that._

 

\---

 

Clint’s so close, and he’s been teetering on the edge for so long that he’s desperate to topple over it, and then Phil’s hands land on either side of his shoulders on the bed as Clint finally breaks through his infuriating calm and gets Phil to finally put his fucking back into it, and Phil’s fingers are pressing his feathers into the mattress and _shit_. That’s never happened before, no one’s ever touched them in any kind of fun situation, but Phil’s definitely touching them now even though he probably has no clue ‘cause if he did Clint can’t believe he’d dig into them so roughly, unruffling their usual smooth glide. Phil’s hips drive forward, and Clint can feel him _everywhere_ —inside and outside, but more importantly, Clint’s _feathers_ can feel him.

 

Clint flies apart and waits, satiated and blissed out, for Phil to piece him back together.

 

He comes back to himself slowly as Phil peppers lazy kisses across his chest before settling down with his head resting over Clint’s heart, an arm wrapped snug around his waist and a leg thrown between his. Clint turns his head to rest his cheek against the top of Phil’s head, too drained to move any further.

 

“You back with me now?” Phil asks teasingly, his mouth spreading wide in a grin against Clint’s pec.

 

“Never gonna be without you,” Clint slurs nonsensically. Phil laughs, and his breath tickles over Clint’s skin pleasantly.

 

“You’re going to have to tell me what I did to leave you this out of it, babe,” Phil mutters.

 

“It was th’best, Phil,” Clint babbles excitedly even as his eyelids droop. “S’like when’m flyin’, ‘cept not, ‘cause you had m’wings pinned.”

 

“Are you comparing my dick to a can of Redbull?” Phil snorts. “Go home, Clint. You’re drunk.”

 

“I thought we were at m’home,” Clint points out with a confused frown.

 

Phil lifts his head up, a goofy grin splitting his face. “Go to sleep, babe,” he directs, pecking Clint chastely on the lips before lying back down on his chest.

 

“Sir, yessir.”

 

\---

 

Being assigned to Pegasus has many downsides—namely getting stuck watching over a room full of science and not doing much of anything else—but it has one major upside, and that is getting to bunk with Phil in his on-site quarters.

 

Clint may be thinking of it as a test-run for moving in together sometime in the near future, but it’s not like Phil needs to know that.

 

He steps out of the shower and heads to the dumpy, standard-issue dresser to steal one of Phil’s plain t-shirts to wear under his tack-vest. He’s sifting through his options (white, black, black, navy, white, navy-black) when something tumbles out of one the rolled up shirts and lands in the bottom of the drawer with a light _thump_. Clint pulls the tiny object out curiously and stands there in his towel, dripping water from his hair, shell-shocked by the golden ring in his palm.

 

Phil shuts a cabinet door in the kitchenette, and Clint jumps back into the present, dropping the ring back into the drawer and pulling out a black tee, quickly dressing to join Phil for breakfast before they both head out for their shifts.

 

Breakfast isn’t anything special, just cereal and fresh fruit, so Clint has no discernable reason to be smiling, but it’s not like he can help it. Phil doesn’t seem to mind though, and he smiles easily back.

 

“You should be off-duty by dinnertime tonight, right?” Clint asks, biting his lip.

 

Phil nods. “I was thinking we could make it a date-night.”

 

Clint picks up a slice of melon and stuffs it in his mouth to keep himself from fucking _beaming_ at Phil ‘cause that would be too suspicious. “I’m always up for date night.”

 

“You’re always up. Date night’s hardly necessary,” Phil teases, the traces of a lewd grin lurking around his mouth, and Clint’s struck by a perfect moment of clarity.

 

_I fucking love you_ , he thinks. _I love you, and I’m going to tell you everything, and you’re going to propose, and we’re going to get married, and everything’s going to be puppies and unicorns._

 

Clint can feel the faint draft of his wings moving and thanks all that is holy that Phil can’t see the damn things because he’s downright _preening_. Phil raises an eyebrow at the flush that spreads over his cheeks, but Clint shakes his head, darting in for a quick kiss and then escaping to head to his post before his wings do something even more embarrassing like try to hug Phil in an invisible embrace.

 

\---

 

_“You have heart.”_

 

\---

 

Fucking aliens are literally falling out of the sky, and Clint should really be more focused on that fact. And he is giving the invading hoard a good bit of his attention, don’t get him wrong, but he’s preoccupied by two other, much more important, things. Phil is dead. Phil is dead, and his wings aren’t moving.

 

They’re there, he can still feel them, and it’s not like they’re always fluttering about, but he’s in the middle of some serious life or death bullshit right here, and that’s usually the only time he can really depend on the things to do what he wants.

 

He runs out of arrows and needs to jump ship _fast_ seeing as how there’s a truckload of aliens on hovercrafts headed his way, and that should not be an issue, his wings are supposed to _have his back_ when he starts flinging himself off shit, but they don’t even quiver.

 

He yanks an arrow out of an alien carcass and reloads the shaft to affix a grappling hook arrowhead, leaping off the building to twist and fire as the rooftop is shot to Hell.

 

He rips down the line, and he can feel the ghostly sensation of the wind rippling over his feathers, but they don’t expand to slow his fall, they don’t wrap around his body to protect him from the spray of glass shards as he bursts through a window.

 

He can’t help but think it’s their way of saying, “Phil’s already gone. What’s the point in saving you?” And yeah, okay. He’s not about to argue with them on that; he’s been thinking it too.

 

\---

 

Phil’s first mission back in the field is a glorified milk run; there’s no reason for Clint to be here, besides the fact that Phil obviously pulled his weight with Fury to get him assigned to it so that he can’t keep avoiding Phil.

 

Clint’s not ready to stop avoiding Phil, though. His emotions are still all tangled up, and he can’t figure out what the hell he’s actually feeling at any given moment re: his relationship with Phil, and his wings won’t calm the fuck down as a result.

 

There’s a bunch of guilt and joy and anger and regret and relief and worry and love all mixed up like some shitty unsolvable Rubix cube in his chest, and in some kind of metaphysical manifestation of all this, his left wing keeps twitching spastically while his right wing jerks out at odd moments and knocks crap over, so people are starting to thinking he’s now a flustered klutz thanks to Loki’s mind-rape thing.

 

Phil’s not pushing to talk yet, at least. Always got to put the mission first, and all. Clint’s not about to complain. He’s fine with playing lookout across the street as Phil heads out to the café patio for the meet.

 

His clumsy right wing flies wide and hits a body behind him, and that’s all the warning Clint gets before an electrical current shoots up his spine and a black bag drops over his head.

 

\---

 

Clint’s missed this, running missions with just him and Coulson. Though now it’s him and _Phil_ , and Phil’s not a voice in his ear a safe distance away, but a very real presence next to him as they head for the roof to try and find a way out of this hellhole of a Hydra HQ that disappointingly doesn’t fall in with the usual mold. All the ground exits are blocked, and all the ways to even _get_ to the ground level are on tight lockdown. Clint would much like to return to the good old days of Hydra’s incessant incompetency, but unfortunately they seem to be learning from their mistakes.

 

Most worryingly, they seem to have this building wired quite extensively with explosives and a top notch system installed to detonate particular floors judging by the chatter over the radio they’d swiped from a pair of buff goons after they laid them out with an excellent combo move. Getting the hell out of dodge _pronto_ sounds like it would be well worth the effort.

 

They break out onto the roof, and Clint is dismayed by the clear line of sight for probably the first time ever in his life. There are no neighboring buildings within jumping distance, nothing laying around that they might be able to use to get down, just really no options to work with.

 

Well, except for Clint. And his magic wings.

 

Clint pauses in the middle of the roof, frozen with indecision as Phil surveys the perimeter trying to think of a plan. They’re about to die. Hydra is going to blow the top floors of their super nice HQ any minute now rather than let two high-ranking SHIELD agents get away. Clint can make it safely off the roof, but he can’t carry Phil with him; learning that lesson the hard way still haunts his nightmares. They’re too high up for either of them to survive the fall even if Clint’s wings can slow them down some.

 

Either they both die on this rooftop, or one of them makes it off alive.

 

“Phil,” Clint calls weakly. Phil spins around with an alarmed look, and Clint rushes over to the ledge where he’s standing to kiss Phil for the first time in over four months.

He pulls back to rest his forehead against Phil’s and gathers his hands to press them tight between his own, squishing their arms together in the cage of their chests. Clint faces Phil head-on and stops trying to sort out the jumble of feelings that’s kept him messed up about everything and lets the only thing that matters shine through. “I can’t lose you again,” he whispers fiercely.

A pained look flashes through Phil’s eyes before he crashes their mouths back together and kisses Clint with the same frantic need that had characterized their very first unplanned, adrenaline-fueled kiss. Clint can feel Phil’s hands heating up under his palms, the warmth seeping from Clint’s and into Phil’s, leaving Clint’s hands chilled like a on crisp winter morning. Clint breaks the kiss reluctantly.

“Don’t worry,” he breathes against Phil’s chapped lips, eyes solemnly locked onto Phil’s. “You’ll grow wings on the way down,” With one last gossamer kiss, Clint lays his hands flat on Phil’s chest and pushes him over the roof’s ledge right as the sound of detonating charges buzzes through the air and the roof shakes beneath his feet.

 

Flames lick at Clint’s back, but his wings don’t unfurl to push them back. White-hot pain arches up his spine and erupts inside his mind, but Clint doesn’t bend or try to shield himself, he keeps his eyes on Phil in free-fall. And then, for half a moment, he catches sight of Phil’s alabaster wings flapping frantically to slow his descent. Clint breathes a sigh of relief and lets the flames take him.

 

**Author's Note:**

> "zog pak" is Albanian for "little bird"
> 
> Digital art/gif credit goes to my lovely, darlingest sister Nelly. :)


End file.
